I saw the light in my companion’s eye. The longer the work meant the more installments it could be cut up into for serialization, and that meant more money when Davenport sold it. Being so close to Davenport’s side during a mission was highly illuminating for me. He presented himself to the household as solicitous, self-effacing, considerate, thoughtful. Though I knew he inhabited a role, it was still a pleasure to witness. Never had I felt myself more dedicated to the success of the bookaneer.
But the mission had its share of problems. Besides the fact that this behemoth of a book was not completed, and apparently expanding its scope by the day, the existing pages of the novel were stored sloppily in piles spread out across the estate. Paper is a rare commodity in Samoa, so even the smallest scraps could be used for a sentence or two. As far as we could tell, some of the novel was written on the backs of pages that had been discarded, or drafts of older manuscripts, or descriptions of Samoan civil wars, or alongside short poems Stevenson had jotted out, often in Samoan. It was a bookaneer’s nightmare. It would be arduous, maybe impossible, for Davenport to assemble the pages himself once Stevenson finished writing—he would have to wait until Stevenson began to do it himself, or risk a situation similar to the notorious affair of ’70, when Dickens expired with half a book in hand, pages scattered to the wind, publishers and legendary bookaneers in a perilous race for whatever remained.
Meanwhile, any searching was complicated by the presence of so many servants around the house. We grew accustomed to John Chinaman’s distrust, which he directed at anyone who came close to Stevenson. Besides garrulous and generous Charlie, the other servants spoke to us in their limited English or not at all. Compared to our own islander, who served us at their cottage, and to the other native servants we encountered, the Vailima operatives were rather smooth and sophisticated, the young women reserved and elegant; in fact, sometimes they seemed far more civilized than the Bohemian family employing them.
While we waited for Stevenson to complete his self-declared masterpiece, Davenport and I were picking up other pieces of information that he felt could prove useful. We rode all across the massive property of Vailima, creating a map of the egresses in case we needed to leave in a hurry. Davenport noted that he had identified only four separate streams, not five, which was what the name Vailima translated to mean; I could not find a fifth on my rides, either, and he directed me to keep looking whenever I was on the grounds, though I did not understand the relevance. Meanwhile, Davenport discovered a list of titles for unwritten novels composed on the flyleaf of a Bible (which Stevenson seemed to use as a sort of notebook). He studied and perfected his mastery of reading Stevenson’s handwriting as it was produced with pencil and ink, careful and careless, sober and drunk, and familiarized himself with the various styles of Belle, to whom the novelist dictated when he was too weak to write. He had also found several short stories Stevenson had completed but never bothered or desired to publish. He did not want to risk provoking suspicion by taking any of these yet, but he noted the positions of these minor gems for later. There were also letters suggesting potential pilgrimages to Samoa from two minor literary lights back in England, James Barrie and Rudyard Kipling, and one quite popular one, Arthur Conan Doyle. I believe for a few moments Davenport hungrily envisioned an island crawling with productive authors, but subsequent correspondence we came across from those men indicated that each one’s plan crumbled because of the expense and difficulty of the trip. Indeed, while doing what I believe New Yorkers like to call snooping, I found letter after letter from friends of the Stevensons who despaired at making the voyage to see him. And letters written by Stevenson to friends, often reproaching them for breaking promises to write, or visit him. Among the ludicrous ways he dated his missives, I noticed, “twenty-something of December” and “Friday—I think.”
Davenport had been present when Charlie interrupted a music session to give Stevenson a message that Mr. Thomas, a local missionary, would be calling there the next day. We had heard Thomas, who we learned was a popular white missionary and occasional trader to these islands, referred to before.
“Our tobacco,” Stevenson said, with the kind of exhaled relief men usually reserved for a hopeful diagnosis from a doctor. He had been perched on the edge of a table in his library, one leg crossed on the other, playing his flageolet. The whistling tune of the instrument in Stevenson’s lips would sound lovely for a moment, and then shockingly off-key later (“the humidity,” Stevenson would say, looking askance at the holes and keys). He put the flageolet aside at Charlie’s tidings. “Thank goodness; our supply is nearly exhausted. John,” he called for his Chinese shadow, who was standing inconspicuously in the doorway. “There you are, John. Have a meal ordered and prepared for Thomas tomorrow at two—Mr. Porter, Mr. Fergins, you ought to come. Are you religious men? I am not, but mother enjoys them. Besides, these missionaries are often surprisingly good company, and this mission has been here for so many years, he brings terribly good stories about island history.”
“We should leave you to your writing for now,” Davenport said, rising to his feet so the power of suggestion might spur him to complete the novel the bookaneer desired.
“In here? Heavens, I never write in here,” he said, looking to the walls of books. “It’s all so suitable for a literary man—drives every idea out of my head. Sometimes I come in here to look for some fact, but I generally seize the book and hurry off with it to my sanctum. People talk of Robinson Crusoe as the beginning of the modern novel, but Defoe based his book on the account of Alexander Selkirk, who stranded himself on an island purposely. That’s how English literature was born, by marooning ourselves far away from everyone else.”